http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/?emc=eta1
Catherine Rampell's 7/15 post on the NY Times "Economix" blog addresses how much money doctors in other countries make. But, prior to doing that, she references Professor Uwe Reinhardt's recent post on "rationing doctor's salaries" - clicking on that post shows a perspective on the much discussed health care initiatives as well as what various specialists make relative to general practitioners: so, for example, the median annual net income of radiologists and cardiologists ($400,000) is more than twice that of family practitioners, internists and pediatricians (less than $200,000). He makes the point that, because of the nationwide lament over a shortage of American medical school graduates willing to enter the primary care specialties, Medicare may substantially increase the fees for primary care physicians.
Rampell's perspective on international physician compensation does an excellent job of setting up comparisons with doctors in the U.S., first with a bar graph and then with a trend line after an informative table using "purchasing power parity" as a guide to how those incomes translate to equivalence here. While doctors (and nurses) are paid more relatively in the U.S., the cost of their education is much more here than it is overseas.
The two pronged Presidential program of expanded (universal) health care coverage while reducing health care costs (which, in and of itself, may not make sense since covering a lot more people usually means a lot more costs - think about it) does not conflict with what doctors get paid. The data does not appear to show that doctors are the culprits in health care system cost increases over the years. In fact, consistent with Professor Reinhardt's perspective, some doctors may need to get paid more!
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The problem, as presently constructed of the healthcare plans in both the House and Senate, is failure to include the cost of medical licensed labor, i.e. doctors and nurses, which is over 60% of the total fixed costs of medical care. By ignoring said medical costs, the healthcare bill was reduced from $1.6 trillion covering an additional 15 million people to $1.0 trillion covering an additional 35 million people.
ReplyDeleteHowever, is any plan a real plan when it ignores 60% of the fixed overhead costs?
Since you guys are covering the economics, I just wanted to point out another view. The interesting thing about the discrepancy in doctor pay (specialists vs. generalists) is that even though specialists make a LOT more money, they don't actually have to "think" as much as the generalists. That is, they face a narrow set of problems and have to understand things in-depth while generalists (i.e. primary care docs) have to treat a broad range of patients and problems. Most generalists report a great deal of satisfaction with their work because they enjoy the challenge, even if they don't get paid as much. Kind of like "teaching" professors vs. "research" professors.
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